For 13 years conservationists have promoted marine protection as a good thing for the Hauraki Gulf. Now they have their wish, ...

Don’t call them swamps. Bogs soak up and store more carbon than forests do, but when they’re drained and used for agriculture, that immense amount of carbon is slowly released. The entrance to one of ...

In a windy land, the most notorious gale is the Canterbury nor’wester. Born in the heart of the mountains, it accelerates down the great valleys east of the Main Divide and roars out across the plains ...

The Geology Museum at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka—University of Otago smells of old wood and older rocks. The walls are lined with geological maps and paintings of extinct creatures—giant penguins, strange ...

Karioi maunga towers above the Raglan coastline, shaping both the weather and the region’s famous surf. Those arriving in Aotearoa on the Tainui waka saw Karioi on the horizon, and some later settled ...

Introduced over 150 years ago as the basis for a fur trade, the Australian brush-tail possum has instead become an ecological plague, chomping its way through millions of tonnes of forest foliage a ...

Gibson’s and Antipodean albatrosses are citizens of no one nation. They are ocean birds, living on the wind and waves, travelling massive distances, passing back and forth over the high seas and the ...

Happy Easter! By the time you read this, I’ll hopefully be in front of the fire in a DOC hut drinking my second hot chocolate. It’s been an eventful week. On Monday, a report revealed that Hawke’s Bay ...

Between 6–10 metres of rain falls in Fiordland each year. An incredible amount. It’s part of what powers the forest-to-fiord carbon storage pump that makes Fiordland exceptionally good at locking away ...

Kina numbers have exploded as we’ve eaten too many of their predators – like big snapper and crayfish – that usually keep them in check. The urchins munch through kelp and seaweed, leaving bare rock ...

The release of Disney’s Moana in te reo was a landmark for Māori language revitalisation. As that rebirth gathers steam, mita, or dialects are returning to the fore. When The Lion King Reo Māori hit ...

Welcome to your new Weekender. Every Friday afternoon, we’ll be bringing you original stories from New Zealand Geographic. The big change is that we’re publishing news stories independently of the ...